Work Injury Attorney: How Weak Federal Oversight Killed Mine Workers

Twenty-five miners are dead after a huge explosion rocked the Upper Big Branch mine, and fears of further explosions due to methane buildups hampered rescue attempts.  News reporters have dug into the history of the mine’s owner, Massey Energy, and found that the company was fined over $1.8 million in the last 5 years for safety violations – some of these fines were for failures to properly vent the deadly methane gas.

 

The federal Mine Safety Health Administration (MSHA) is supposed to regulate and enforce workplace safety for mine workers.  However, the terrible tragedy at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia shows just how badly a federal agency can screw up its mission to protect workers from the selfish interests of profit driven companies.

 

During the first term of the Bush administration, David Lauriski, a former mine industry lobbyist, took over as head of MSHA.  While Lauriski was in charge, there were major cutbacks in the agency’s budget which led to fewer inspectors and reduced enforcement.  A number of safety proposals were also rescinded.  Lauriski was replaced – again by Bush, without the approval of the Senate – by Richard Stickler, who had once been an executive at a Massey Energy subsidiary (how is that for conflict of interest?).  The Obama administration recently replaced Stickler with Joe Main, but not before the damage was done.

 

According to a recent government audit, MSHA has a dismal track record of training mine safety inspectors.  Not only are inspectors not getting their mandatory training, but there are no consequences when they fail to complete the necessary courses.  How can MSHA inspectors do their job if they are not properly trained?

There’s more.  Mine companies – like Massey Energy – can appeal fines against them for safety violations.  This can tie up the citation and the fine in court for sometimes years, all while the mine company (again, like Massey Energy) continues business as usual – without any of the contested citations going on their permanent safety record.

 

The backlog is so bad that the federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission has 16,000 cases right now, up from 2,100 in 2006.  This bumped the time needed to process each case up from 178 to 401 days – that’s over one year!  If you were Massey CEO Don Blankenship, wouldn’t you use this backlog to your advantage, too?

 

So what is the result when leadership at a federal workplace safety agency becomes political, when federal inspectors fail to get the training they need to do their job, and when fines and citations are tied up for years in court while companies are free to continue their bad behavior?  It almost makes the terrible tragedy in West Virginia’s Upper Branch Mine seem inevitable, and makes the protection and strengthening of our civil justice system even more important.